If you haven’t been around here long, you may not know that I LOVE the secret recipe club. Seriously one of the best decisions I have made since I started blogging was joining the club. Looovvee it! Full of great, fun people with awesome blogs!! To learn more about the Secret Recipe Club, you can click here to see how it works

For the month of February, I was assigned to post about The Gingered Whisk. Jenni is the wonderful host of The Gingered Whisk. She is totally adorable (I know that’s like totally wrong for me to say since I’m younger, but whatever!) Naturally she is a ginger. Hence the “gingered” whisk! I love how she has a light heart about being a ginger, I know some people can be super sensitive to the term!! (In case you’re not familiar with what a “ginger” is…it’s a red-head; a person with red hair ) I love how real of a person she seems. I felt totally connected with her when she mentioned that she always has her toenails painted but can’t keep her fingernails painted for 5 minutes. I’m like the EXACT same. Seriously, nail polish on my fingernails just looks so, so, so wrong. But then toenails without polish just look…naked. yuck! We need to keep it PG around here!!

Anywho, the hardest part for this post, as it seems for EVERY SRC post, was picking the recipe I wanted to make. I noticed she made The Pioneer Woman‘s famous cinnamon rolls, that I have been meaning to make forever!! She finally pushed me over the edge and I finally made them! I decided however not to use that post as my secret recipe club post since it didn’t really highlight Jenni as much, which is like the point of this post!

So I finally settled on making Jenni’s Old World Pumpkin Bars. I tend to associate pumpkin with Fall, but these just looked too good for me to pass up. I’m a huge fan of layered bar recipes and this bar definitely has layers! At the base you have a buttery shortbread crust that where oatmeal add a nice little hearty element, then you have the pumpkin layer-hello gooey yumminess!, then the whole bar is topped off with a brown sugar-pecan crumb topping. Perfection

If you’d like to see more delicious recipes like this one, hop on over to the Gingered Whisk right now!!

Old World Pumpkin Bars

(FROM the Gingered Whisk)

(I halved the recipe to fit a 9×9 inch dish)

1/2 cup flour (I used half whole wheat, half all-purpose)

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup oatmeal

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon cloves

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons white sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 cup pecans (I chopped mine up a little bit)

1 Tablespoon butter

1/4 cup brown sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix flour, brown sugar, oatmeal, and butter until fully combined. Press crust mixture into 9 x 9 inch baking dish. Bake in preheated oven for 7-10 minutes or until golden on edges. When fully baked, take out of oven, but keep oven on.
2. Mix pumpkin, egg, cinnamon, cloves, milk, white sugar, and ginger. Once fully mixed, pour over crust and bake in 350 degree F oven for 10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, mix chopped pecan, butter and brown sugar together. I found using a fork to be the easiest method. When pumpkin layer is done baking, take out of oven (Keep oven on!) and sprinkle brown sugar-pecan mixture on top. Bake an additional 7-10 minutes in 350 degree F oven. Cool before serving and enjoy by itself, with whipped cream, or vanilla ice cream!

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